The Fall
by Lunatique
Summary: The story of Seifer's fall, told from Quistis' point of view. In game timeline, Seiftis undertones.
1. Burn the Night

**The Fall**

**Chapter 1: Burn the Night**

Firecrackers. I remember their trails of light across the night sky.

It began during one of those dinners at the old orphanage, one of many when we were maybe five or six.

"Pssst, Quisty." He leans all the the way across the table, "accidentally" knocking over Zell's soup bowl with an elbow. "Wanna come out to the beach tonight? 10 o'clock?"

I clean up the spill for Zell, who seems on the verge of tears. Pushing my bowl of soup to him, I shoot a disapproving glance at the green-eyed devil across the table from me. Such an annoying boy--he's been here a little over a year, and he's already caused more trouble than all the rest of us put together. "We're not supposed to go out that late, Seifer."

"The beach? What for?" Selphie's wide eyes shine as she leans in to listen, with little Irvine fighting for elbow room.

Seifer rolls his eyes. "Little _kids_ aren't invited."

"Hey, no fair!" Irvine's voice is a little too loud, and I shush him quickly: Matron is in the next room, talking to a guest. "You and Quisty's only a year older!" He says, lowering his tone.

"'You and Quisty _are_,'" Seifer and I say at the same time, and he returns my indignant glare with a wink; grammar correction has always been _my_ department.

"See, Irvy-poo?" He pats Irvine mockingly on the head, who draws away with a scowl.

"Is this about that box under your bed?" Squall's voice is flat, as it has been since Sis left so suddenly. It's like he really doesn't care anymore... There's a little ache in my heart, like always when I hear how differently he speaks now.

"Hey, runt." In a flash Seifer is out of his chair and in Squall's face, knuckles white around the back of the smaller boy's chair. "You better not have been in my things."

"Whatever." Squall turns his back and stands--only to tumble to the floor when Seifer pushes him from behind, hard.

Seifer stands over Squall as he struggles to his feet. I just _know_ this is going to be another fight. It's been like this ever since the day Sis left without saying good-bye.

"I asked you a question, runt."

"No you didn't, Seifer." Zell pipes up, as usual, at the worst possible moment. "You just tried to scare him."

Seifer pauses, and I go tense. Will he try to hit Squall? Zell? My hands fist up like they have a mind of their own.

But Seifer's never one to do the expected. He bursts out laughing instead, eyes sparkling, teeth even and white against full lips. _Such a pretty child,_ they all say about him, the couples who come to the orphanage. That's what they say, anyway, until he spills a bucket of paint over them or shaves their poodle bald with Cid's old razor.

"What can I say?" Seifer catches his breath. "You're such a genius, Zelly." While Zell tries to figure out whether he has been complimented or insulted, chairs scrape in the next room and Matron will soon come in to check on them. I hurry to Squall, who has stood up and is brushing himself off.

"Are you okay?" He deliberately turns his back on me and leaves the dining room, his footsteps quiet on the old wood.

"'Course he's okay," Seifer says snidely. "Zombie Boy could have his guts spilled all over, and if you ask him, he's fine." I flinch at the horrible image and glare, wondering if he's been into one of those monster movies Matron forbade us, but his eyes are already on the other three in the room.

"You, you, you," he points at Selphie, Irvine, and Zell. "Stay away from the beach." Then, with a sly grin and another wink at me he is gone. Soon noisy footsteps pound the stairs on their way up to the second floor.

I know that look too well. Selphie and Irvine immediately resolve to each other not to let that meanie Seifer scare them, and even Zell looks interested despite himself. Of course, I sigh, _someone_ responsible has to keep an eye on them. 

Besides, is there any way I'd let him have all the fun? I duck my head to hide a smile as I clear away the dishes.

* * *

So it is that Seifer finds the three of us, Selphie, Irvine, and me, standing on the beach at ten o'clock at night. The most irritating part is, he doesn't seem the least bit surprised. Under all his pranks and noise he was always sneaky inside. _Crafty._ It's a new word I read today, and Seifer's exactly that--crafty.

He puts down the carton he's lugged here. It has a ripply look, as if it was wet once and dried afterward--probably a piece of the flotsam and jetsam he loves to dig through. He throws the lid dramatically open...

"Ohhhh!" Selphie squeals. "Fireworks!"

Seifer puts a finger to his lips, which is enough to silence her. "And matches, too." He fishes a matchbox out of a pocket.

I'm immediately suspicious. "Where'd you get that?"

"Filched 'em from the kitchen." His eyes seem to give off a glow of mischief in the dark.

I really have should put an end to the foolishness right there and then. Still, excitement rises inside me at the neat rows of vinyl-wrapped cylinders lying side by side. Well, maybe just a few...

"I wanna go first!" Selphie jumps up and down, trying to grab the matchbox that Seifer holds out of her reach. "Me, me, me!"

"Seifer," I say suddenly, "did you bring water? You're supposed to have water handy." If we're going to do this, we're going to do it right.

He looks at me like a cat at cream. _Gotcha._ He runs back up the slope leading to the house and carries back a bucket from the garden, which I fill with sea water.

The next few moments are a torrent of confusion that we were lucky to survive.

"It says here that you light the-"

"Whoo-hoo! Dibs on the match!"

"Waitaminnit, I want to-"

"Don't point that at me, twerp!"

"Don't call Irvy a-"

"You're not supposed to-"

"Hey! You all _stand back._"

We all do, just in time, as the first firecracker shoots into the velvet-black night in a trail of colors. It's a lot louder than we expected, but none of us care as we jump and whoop with joy, with the thrill of the forbidden.

Soon Seifer and I have taken our turns("Older kids first!") and collapse, laughing, onto the sand as Irvine and Selphie have a go at it.

Seifer casts me a sidelong glance as we lie side by side, hands pillowed behind our heads. "You having fun, Quisty?"

"Uh-huh!" I answer, caught up in the moment, before I realize I'm just giving him an excuse to gloat.

Instead, he just nods to himself without a trace of spite. "Good. You have to have some fun sometimes, right?"

"Then I guess you have _way_ too much fun, Seifer." He's really very nice when he forgets about being mean to us. The sound of waves breaking on sand is like a lullaby, and I'm having a beautiful dream under a beautiful sky.

"That's good, ain't it?" He smiles and points up at the firecrackers going off, comets of gold and red and purple and green against the night sky. "I'm going to die like that, Quisty. Go out with a bang." He opens his hand to mimic explosions, then drops his hand.

I raise myself on one elbow to stare at him. A child not yet ten on a starry night, watching fireworks and thinking of his own death? I don't understand it, or him.

"Yooouuuuu!"

I wince before I turn to look. Only one person I know can turn 'you' into a twelve-syllable word.

"Kids aren't supposed to play with fireworks!" Zell comes running down the slope from the house. "I'm tell-ing! I'm gonna tell on you-ou!" He has that smug 'You're in trouble, I'm not' look on his face again.

_Oh, Hyne._ Zell is a nice boy, but sometimes he can be a little TOO nice, too ... goody-goody. Of course we did wrong, I realize as if coming awake from a dream. We shouldn't have snuck out at night, we should never have done something so dangerous without adults watching, whispers my conscience.

But then I am angry. Why can't Zell understand what it is to watch a dazzlingly painted sky at night, or what it's like when Seifer is so nice to me and tells me his deepest secrets while the sea whispers in the night?

"Crybaby Zell," I say petulantly, before I can stop myself. "Go back to bed, will you?"

"Yeah!" Suddenly Seifer is at my side, his usual mean smirk firmly back in place. "Cry-baby Ze-ell!" He chants. "Go back to be-ed!"

Soon Selphie and Irvine have joined in, and I meet Zell's hurt gaze with apologetic eyes. His eyes fill with tears and he runs away, no doubt to bring Matron if she isn't already on her way.

I sigh. The sky is dark and calm again. Used firecrackers are smoking in the bucket, and burned-out matches are strewn all over the sand. I wish I could see the colors dancing in Seifer's eyes again, his face content even as he spoke of death. It is forever how I will remember him, as a riddle and a dream.

The guilty pleasure of playing with fire has stayed with me all my life.

tbc


	2. Scars of Passion

Thanks for the really nice review, RubyTuesday! Nope, I can't imagine Seifer, even a young one, as any kind of angel. Unless we're talking fallen angels, that is. :)

* * *

**The Fall**

**Chapter 2: Scars of Passion**

_A decade later..._

I look up from my paperwork and contemplate him for a few moments before speaking. "Why did you do it, Seifer?"

Seifer sits across a metal table from me handcuffed to his chair, long legs stretched out before him. His silver-gray coat hangs on a hook by the door. He's been uncharacteristically quiet for the past hour, the dull blandness of the disciplinary chamber only amplified by his silence.

"Do what?" He gives me a disinterested stare. "Which one--fighting your precious Squall, or deserting my position?"

"Both." I let the 'precious' part slide. I have verbally sparred with him far too often not to know a trap when I see one.

"Why does anyone do anything?" He takes his eyes off my face to stare into the air over my head. "I was bored. It was something to do."

"Well, I hope wounding a Garden student and jeopardizing our mission in Dollet were enough to alleviate your...boredom." It's amazing how little a decade of Garden discipline has done for his self-control--I remember hearing that he has been here at Garden since seven or eight years of age. I trace my gaze down the fresh scar across the bridge of his nose, raw and angry, like him.

"I do my best." Suddenly there's a soft click from behind his chair. He brings out his hands from behind him, dangling opened handcuffs from an index finger.

"Would you put those back on?" I roll my eyes as I put down my pen. "Someone might come in."

"Know what's insulting?" He spins the cuffs contemplatively around a finger. "I took all those survival and escape courses three, four damn times. And after boring me to tears they expect _handcuffs_ to hold me in place."

"Do you have any decency, Seifer?" I let out a long-suffering sigh. "At least try and pretend to be remorseful if you can't manage the real thing."

He stretches and yawns, cat-like, and rubs at his wrists. I feel a pang at the sight of the slightly chafed skin--handcuffs were a stupid idea in the first place. He puts his hands behind his back again, and presently the cuffs click quietly shut.

"You're no fun, Instructor."

"I'm not an instructor anymore." The words hurt on their way out, like acid. "Don't call me that."

"You're not?" His dulled eyes spark to life at seeing something to bait me with. Hyne, why couldn't I have kept my mouth shut? "They fired you."

"Your adroitness astonishes me, Seifer," I say dryly, and turn back to the paperwork on the table. There's something horribly perverse about taking someone's much-loved job and then making her fill out paperwork over it. I am simply in no mood to make make out a detailed analysis of my failings.

"I'm sorry, Trepe."

I look up in shock. Did he just say... "Sorry?"

"Don't be daft. It sucks you lost your license. I know you love teaching, even if you did a mediocre job of it."

My temper flares up, hotter than ever before. Of _course_ he tosses in yet another barb about my supposed inadequacies.

"Mediocrity is a strong accusation." I look him straight in the eyes, voice gone rigid with anger. "Especially from someone like you, Seifer."

"Oh, please." He looks to the ceiling, as though to the heavens for help. "You should know better than I do, you're a terrible instructor--were a terrible instructor." My right hand clenches into a fist. "You assumed we already knew the material you taught, made no effort whatsoever to help us understand, were impatient with anyone who asked questions, you didn't discipline your students, you played favorites-"

"I do _not_ play favorites!" I slam a fist down on the table, standing so brusquely that my chair topples loudly to the floor.

He bursts out laughing, and I have to restrain the urge to slap him.

"That's rich, Quistis." I flinch--he didn't often call me by first name, not since--since we were students together, I suppose. I can't really recall it, though I know we were on a first-name basis... once. "I mean, everyone except Lion Boy knows you've got this hopeless crush on him. Professional of you, ain't it?"

I stride around the table to stand directly before his chair. I look down at him with a gaze that has made T-Rexes tremble, but he meets my eye calmly.

"Well, Seifer," I all but snarl, "let me tell you why I lost my instructor's license. It's because a certain student of mine," he remains expressionless, "has screwed up repeatedly, namely failed his field exam four times in a row. Now, wouldn't it be nice if that certain person _shut up_ about people who are _not_ losers."

"Hey." He utterly dismisses me with a nonchalant face, a shrug of broad shoulders. "Pot to the kettle, _Instructor._"

_Slap._

My aggression finally finds an outlet and I strike him across the face with all my strength. His head snaps to one side from the force of the blow, the blood rushing to his left cheek as though colored by my own anger.

It takes me a moment to realize that I'm breathing hard, right hand still in the air. I let it fall limply to my side as Seifer slowly turns his head to face me again, flexing his neck a little. I remember too late that I am fully junctioned while he has no junctions at all--I could well have snapped his neck with that blow.

Is this what I've been reduced to, near-murder in a fit of rage? My eyes start to prickle, a terrible emptiness in my chest where the fire's rushed out.

Seifer opens and shuts his jaws to test for injury, then licks away a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. "Well, Trepe."

I brace myself for his next words. And I deserve every one of them, no matter how harsh.

"Better now?"

"What?" I stare. Hyne's mercy, _don't_ tell me I've given him some kind of brain damage.

But Seifer's eyes are focused on me, his speech clear. "I said, does that make you feel better."

"Oh, God." I can't help but give a shaky laugh, not a humorous laugh but a tension-relieving one. "You did that... on purpose?" Not again. He constantly surprises me, always takes away the composure I so cherish.

But can I honestly say I don't enjoy it, in a twisted kind of way?

"You looked like you needed to kill something." He cocks his head to one side with a smirk. "Since it's my fault you can't relieve some stress in the Training Center..."

I quirk an eyebrow, a whimsical mood seizing me. "Rather gives the term 'physical therapy' a whole new meaning, doesn't it."

He chuckles. "Picking up my fucked-up sense of humor?"

"So it seems." I give a snort of laughter, relieved and off-balance at once--the psychological basis of humor, or so I've read.

It's just a nice feeling, being able to laugh with him.

I can't help but ask: "Was I really that terrible?"

"Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's no doubt you're bloody brilliant yourself--what?" he says at the dumbfounded look on my face. "I never said _you_ were mediocre. I said you were a mediocre _instructor._ You're too smart to think on the level of mere mortals. That was your problem."

He tips his chair lazily back, grinning. "Know what those kids did after your classes were over? They'd crowd around my desk, wanting to know what the hell it was you were talking about. 'Seifer, you took this class before, right? What was it she said about the hierarchy of elemental weaknesses?' Me and the posse feasted like kings on the meal tickets I earned."

"I never knew." Now I feel terrible. Why didn't anyone tell me?

"Oh, your lectures were okay. Well-researched, lucid, exhaustive... decades ahead of the target audience, but they were good."

"What, Seifer Almasy trying to make me feel better?" I smile in spite of myself. "What is this world coming to?"

"Don't go telling anybody." He says in a mock-threatening growl. "I got a reputation to keep."

I smile, then sigh. So there it is, a detailed list of my failings. Leave it to Seifer to be so brutally frank. "It's preferable to 'Go talk to a wall' at any rate."

"What was that?" He leans forward.

"Nothing." I lean back against the table and cross my arms. "Why do we always argue, Seifer? It's good to talk to you. Really talk." It's almost familiar, like a memory on the verge of remembrance...

"We don't argue." A cold distance comes into his eyes. "You're an instructor. I'm your student. You yell at me, I mouth off. Arguing is something you do when you're on the same level."

"I-I consider you an equal," I stumble, stung by the accusation.

"Hey." A harsh glitter enters his eye, in spite of the smile playing about his lips. "You really _are_ picking up my fucked-up sense of humor."

"Look, Seifer-" I shake my head, wondering again how the conversation took such an abrupt turn. He doesn't let me finish.

"I've always preferred your bitchiness to your hypocrisy." A pause. "Instructor."

He could hardly have been more insulting if he'd spat in my face. He acts like someone whose one goal in life is to crawl under my skin and stay there, and I've had quite, quite enough.

"Just... just forget it, Seifer." I hold my hands up, drop them. "I've wasted enough of my time." I was a fool to think we could ever act like human beings around each other; that's a deal that only works when both parties are human.

Just then the door clicks open, and a familiar face pokes in. "Hey, Quistis."

"Derek." I manage a half-hearted smile, my temper subsiding somewhat at the sight of the round, placid face of my fellow instructor.

Derek walks into the room, picking up my toppled chair from the floor. "Came to check up on you. How's he... Whoa, Almasy!" He starts at the sight of Seifer's face. "What'd you do? Couldn't keep your hands to yourself, or what?" I clench my teeth.

"Me? Feel up my favorite ex-instructor?" Seifer's eyes widen in mock innocence. "Hell no. I'm not partial to frostbite."

Derek laughs out loud, looks to me and, noting that I'm far from amused, quickly disguises it as a coughing fit.

Men.

He pulls up another chair from the wall and sits by the table. "Man, I'm bored. I almost envy those three kids they sent to Timber. They only passed yesterday, and they're already seeing some action-"

"_What?_"

I turn to look at Seifer, startled. The blazing green in his eyes is unnaturally bright against his suddenly pale face.

"They could end up against the whole goddamned G-army, and they send in three rookie SeeDs?" He leans forward in his chair, the movement halted by the handcuffs holding his hands behind his back. "Fucking morons! Why do they think Deling wanted the tower at Dollet?"

Dollet? What does his failure at Dollet have anything to do with this? "I'm sure they'll be fine. They actually made SeeD, unlike some people I know of." I don't try to keep the taunting edge out of my voice.

"Shut up, Trepe."

The blood rushes to my head all over again, making me see red. "Don't you dare-"

"Hey, calm down." Derek's hand is gentle on my shoulder. "Don't let him get to you, okay? Look, Almasy," he turns to Seifer. "I heard you helped set up this mission. I can understand how you'd be upset, but Leonhart, Dincht, and Tilmitt are trained SeeDs. I'm sure they can handle it."

"Screw it all," Seifer says suddenly, obviously not having heard a word Derek just said. With quiet conviction: "I'm going to Timber."

I almost laugh. "Suit yourself." Clearly there's nothing to worry about--such colossal irresponsibility is obviously outside the scope of imagination, even for Seifer Almasy. Derek relaxes and sits down. I return to the table and my report, and focus much better this time. I make good progress for about a quarter of an hour before I hear a small metallic click. Mildly curious, I look in the direction of the sound.

I watch, almost mesmerized, as a pair of handcuffs clatter to the floor to land on the floor behind Seifer's chair. The fluorescent overhead glances brightly off the metal, a harsh stab of light.

-tbc


	3. Trains of Thought

**The Fall**

**Chapter 3: Trains of Thought**

* * *

I don't think about it; I've been trained not to. My chain whip is unfurled the next instant and hurtling through the air at Seifer.

Sense danger, move, don't freeze. Lash out. Take action. Reacting before thinking in immediate danger saves precious milliseconds and often a SeeD's life. It's the backbone of our training, just one of the things that make us the best military force in the world.

Of course, damn it, Seifer's received the same training. He dodges out of the chair to the floor, leaving me with nothing to strike but empty chair. A resounding crack, and it goes flying against the far wall.

With a hard jerk I recall the whiplash and whirl round, strands of hair streaking across my field of vision, nerves singing with adrenaline. Derek's whipped out his handgun and Seifer is already rolling, five quick snapshots marking the floor in his wake. Each misses him by less than a hand's breadth.

Then he's up against a wall with no more escape, and the door bursts open behind us to admit the cadets from the antechamber. Seifer has no chance, he never had any chance.

Derek cocks his gun to shoot where it would subdue but not kill, probably a knee or both. I never find out.

Because at that moment Seifer jumps from his half-crouch against the wall like a cornered animal to charge straight into the line of fire, and my subduing strike comes too late. The gunshot goes wide and Seifer tackles Derek to the floor, raising his fist at the same time. Blood spurts once, twice, and Derek lies bleeding from the nose and mouth.

All right, so we underestimated him. No matter: Good he may be, superhuman he is not. My whip changes direction seemingly of its own volition to wrap itself securely around Seifer's neck. A choked gurgle escapes from his mouth as I pull the lash taut and his windpipe constricts. Seifer may have bested a SeeD but SeeD bested him. Which is as it should be.

I turn to the cadets who look on with awed eyes, whether at me or Seifer it's hard to tell. I'm going to need their help to take Derek to medical bay. As for Seifer, Hyne be my witness, I'll request forced sedation under armed guard if I have to. Then there's a tugging at my whip hand and I turn to look.

It's animal instinct to panic, panic, panic when one can't breathe. Animals are all people are in a life-and-death situation, after all. The animal will try to escape blindly from the immediate obstruction to life-giving air, will struggle like a thing possessed and eventually exhaust itself.

Well, I never stopped to consider how infernally cunning some of them could be. Especially this one. In the split second it takes to turn and look I realize I have let my guard down.

Seifer doesn't waste the last of his precious air supply to struggle against the noose. Instead his hand is entwined in the lash and he pulls, yanking me abruptly off balance. My hand clutches relexively around the handle--in animal panic.

Suddenly lights explode in my head and I'm stumbling back, blinded. Seifer has backhanded me into a wall, I realize a moment later, and I've lost hold of the chain whip.

Though a haze of pain I see Seifer slamming a steel-toed boot into the midsection of a charging cadet, then swinging his inert form into the other cadet's line of attack. The chain whip glitters around his neck like a strange necklace but no longer cuts off air. As the two cadets go down in a tangle of arms and legs Seifer unwinds the chain from around his neck with a look of faint contempt.

"Seifer," I croak, barely recognizing my voice. The side of my face throbs with pain and my heart pounds.

He steps over Derek's prone form on his way, takes his coat from the hook.

"Seifer!" No. He's about to walk out into that vast unknown and I can't stop him because of a stupid blow to the head. A frantic step away from the wall just earns me a nauseating dizzy spell, forcing me to lean back again.

He shrugs his coat on and strolls out the open door, pausing only to pick up Hyperion's matte black case from the antechamber beyond. Another door swishes open and shut, and then he is gone.

An inarticulate gurgle from the floor, and Derek is waking up. I test my feet with a hand to the wall, then gingerly make my way to his side. The world spins a little about me but doesn't flip over, for which I'm duly thankful.

"Quis...tis?" Blood and broken teeth bubble out of Derek's mouth with words. It looks bad, but it's nothing Doctor K can't fix.

"Don't try to talk." I kneel and put a hand on his forhead. "The Doctor will help you."

"Almasy..."

I sigh, and can't believe how unbelievably tired I am all of a sudden. "Gone."

A lopsided grin twists the SeeD's broken mouth, his words slurred together. "So...what're you...wating for?"

"You're absolutely right," I whisper, then raise my voice to a cadet rubbing his head and sitting up. "Keep him awake. Page the infirmary." I squeeze Derek's hand, share a grin, and let go.

Then I'm back on my feet whip in hand, striding to the door without a second glance just like _he_ did. Keep it simple, Quistis. A cadet under your charge has gone AWOL--what are you waiting for?

* * *

"Quistis!" Xu's familiar worried frown greets me at the entrance to the garage, which is closed. A swarm of students and personnel surround it, but before I can look closer Xu's iron grip is on my arm, sitting me forcibly down on a bench.

"Xu, I don't have time. Seifer--"

"I know. Quiet." A whispered incantation brings a soft blue glow to her hand, which she runs down the right side of my face. "Jesus, girl. If the bastard had been junctioned--"

"It would have been a lot worse." I shake her hand off and stand, the residual magic making me a little dizzy. The Cure spell does its job anyway; the throbbing in my cheek is soothed away by comforting coolness. Testing with my tongue I can see it's still a little tender, but that should fade soon, too. "Seifer?"

"Gone, with a trail of minor wounded. He took a car, besides Alexander and Tiamat." I close my eyes briefly: We're talking very powerful firepower there in terms of GF. "Considerately jammed the garage doors on his way, too." Xu scowls. "They're going to jimmy them open, or blast them, one of those things. If only we'd had a decent number of SeeDs around..." Just then there's a quick cheer from the garage entrance. I look just in time to see it sliding open.

"He said he was going to Timber." I cut straight through the people through the doors, Xu keeping up at my side. The staccato beat of our heels echoes loudly against concrete. "Can you shut the trains down?"

"It won't be easy."

"Try, anyway. Until we can be sure he's not on the island." I climb into a jeep, swipe my ID card through the ignition. "I don't put it past him to fall behind me to throw me off." Or maybe he anticipates me anticipating him. God, what a mess. The engine rumbles into motion, and the outer door of the garage eases open.

"I'll send backup." Xu steps back holding the door, then her eyes go hard. "Show him the difference, Quistis. Between a talented failure and a real SeeD." The door slams shut with cold finality, then she's backing away and brusquely signaling the technicians to get away from the exit.

_A talented failure._ Damn him. Tires scream on concrete and coveralled figures dodge out of the way; midday sun floods the car instead of hollow dark. A nameless urgency pounds in my chest: If only I can bring him back before whatever point of no return... I turn due west towards Balamb and drive like a maniac the rest of the way.

* * *

There's a Garden-issue jeep in the train station's parking lot. Seifer must have been here. My own car screeches to a stop across three parking spaces and I jump out without bothering to park it properly. Then it's a mad dash to the ticket booth, where I bring myself up short against the window.

"Did you see a tall man, about twenty, tall, blond hair, grey coat?" That comes out all in one breath, and the ticket seller looks a little alarmed.

"I believe I did. It's been a pretty busy day, and I'm not all that sure, but..."

"He has a scar across his face." I trace a diagonal line down my own face. "And red crosses down his sleeves."

"Oh! Him, yeah, I remember. Handsome, isn't he? It's too bad about the scar, but-"

"Which train?"

"The one that's leaving in two minutes, I think. No more tickets for that one, sorry."

"Thank you." So he is taking a train. I have to stop it somehow unless I want to go haring after him all the way to Timber.

I run out to the tracks and sure enough, a sleek red-and-grey train is ready to go on the tracks, overhead speakers blaring announcements, tardy passengers boarding hurriedly with their luggage. I spot a uniformed conductor next to the tracks and stride up to him.

"SeeD." I flash my ID and shout to be heard over the commotion. "You need to stop this train immediately."

The man looks startled and not at all pleased. "Sorry ma'am, I'm not authorized to-"

"Then get someone who is! There's a cadet gone AWOL from Garden on board, and you will stop this vehicle right this moment so SeeD can search for him."

He looks unperturbed. "Do you have the necessary papers?"

I waste a few precious seconds staring. "No, I do not have papers and I have no desire to waste my time-"

Just then, the train starts moving.

"Well, there it goes." The man sounds actually amused.

I shoot him a murderous glance. This day has been much too long and trying for diplomacy.

The chain whip's grip is in firm my hand as I remove it from my belt. Before he can even finish his cry of surprise I take aim at one of the train's vertical bars and strike.

The pull forward is hard and sudden, but I expected that. I kick off hard, the terror and exhilaration rushing as pure energy through my limbs. A sickening lurch and I am brought against the train's outer wall, the wind tearing at my clothes and hair.

"Stop the train!" Comes several panicked voices from behind, the conductor I just spoke to among them. I smirk to myself even as I hang on for dear life. So much for papers.

"It's okay, I got her!" A very familiar voice shouts too close to my ear, too loud. Before I can get my bearings inexorable hands are dragging me away from the sun and wind into cool, quiet shade, to be dumped unceremoniously on a hard surface.

And I'm sitting on the floor inside a link between train cars, whip in hand, watching Seifer Almasy force the door to the outside firmly shut. The train is picking up speed, not stopping.

"Whew! That was a close one." I look up to see another conductor, who goes from relief to severe reprimand when she looks at me. "You'll be charged a fine on arrival, ma'am, for disorderly and irresponsible conduct. Your ticket?"

"I don't have one." Talk about misery.

The train conductor clucks her tongue disapprovingly. "That'll cost you over ten thousand gil, you know." Then she moves on to Seifer and says in a much warmer voice, "that was quite a bit of heroism, young man. You saved the day."

He did nothing of the sort, I feel like screaming while Seifer exchanges pleasantries with the woman, a disturbingly angelic smile on his face. Mercifully soon she's gone with a last friendly wave at Seifer, closing the door behind her. Seifer and I look at each other, and suddenly I'm acutely conscious of the whip still in my hand and Hyperion at Seifer's side, almost hidden in the folds of his grey coat. Then he breaks out into an amused smirk.

"Not going to thank me, Trepe?"

"Thank you?" The nerve! "We both know the only one you saved was yourself, Seifer. If you hadn't pulled me in they'd have stopped the train and you'd be on your way to Garden right this moment."

He fakes a pout. "Well, if you're not feeling grateful I'll just get back to my seat and-"

I shake my head. I need something for this headache--preferably a stiff drink. "SeeD compartment. With me. Right now." I don't want him out of my sight until I can drag him on board the return train.

"Aww...I never knew you were this eager to be alone with me, Instructor."

I have to remind myself that the objective is to bring him back, not kill him. I silently gesture at him to walk ahead of me to the SeeD compartment, where I have the card read and admit us both.

Seifer immediately makes himself at home on the long couch, spreading his arms expansively across the backrest. I sit on a chair facing perpendicular to it, watching him warily. For all his relaxation his hand never strays too far from Hyperion's pistol hilt, and my hand lingers near my weapon belt at all times. Tense silence presses in with tangible force.

Stalemate.

"What would it take to get you to go quietly back with me?"

Seifer looks disinterested. "I don't know. An army?"

I lean back hard in my seat, sighing in exasperation. This man is completely impossible.

"If this keeps up, it's going to get you expelled, Seifer. And that's one of the better-case scenarios."

"I know that." Seifer's voice is suddenly heavy, his face unreadable.

That's curious. Where's the familiar bluster, the grand declaration of future heroics? For a moment Seifer has the look of someone torn by impossible pressures, until the familiar look of arrogance sets in again.

"You know I'm the one who set up this mission, right?" He grins a little at me, but why does it feel so strained?

"Derek said something about that, yes."

"Her name is Rinoa," he blurts out distractedly. "Spoiled brat with great legs, during my, um, summer at Timber. Last summer. She's got this resistance group, useless bunch too, and uh..." His voice fades uncertainly. He hardly seemed to know what he was saying, anyway. Is that clenched fist on his knee trembling? "I helped set up this mission," Seifer continues lamely. "Three rookie SeeDs, shit, what's Garden thinking anyway."

"Are you all right?" Beads of sweat have gathered on his brow, glistening in the overhead lights. "Seifer?" He could have been hurt during the SeeD exam or the earlier fight. Infection-induced fever, maybe. I reach out to take his temperature.

"Leave me be, Trepe!" He flinches away at my touch. "I'm not sick if that's what you think it is."

I try to catch his eye but he looks away. "Something's wrong. Tell me."

Stubborn silence stretches on, punctuated only by the constant sounds from the moving train. Three rookie SeeDs? He's said something to that effect in the disciplinary chamber. I wish I could remember better but all that comes to mind is the glare of fluorescent lights off fallen handcuffs, a crack of a whip, gunshots, violence.

I realize that the pressure on my eardrums is lighter and the darkness outside has been replaced with late-afternoon sunlight. At some point the train emerged from the underwater tunnel, more than halfway to Timber, and I still have no idea how to get Seifer on board the return train.

"_Attention, passengers._" The speaker crackles to life. "_The train will slow for the next twenty minutes due to ongoing railroad repairs. We apologize for the inconvenience._"

Wait...an announcement. Something--a broadcast. Communications.

"Is this about the communications tower at Dollet?" I blurt out.

The effect is immediate and unmistakeable. Seifer starts violently out of whatever reverie he was in, and looks at me with something akin to fear in his eyes. Bingo.

"What the hell are you talking about, Trepe?" He sounds unusually harsh, which tells me I'm definitely on the right track.

"But why would the tower be important? The worldwide signal jam doesn't let any radio wave get far."

"Drop it, Trepe." His voice is a low, warning growl, his eyes wild. His hand falls on Hyperion's grip but I stand to face him, hand on my own weapon.

"Unless you built powerful routing stations, but that doesn't make economic sense, doesn't it. That's why cable's replaced broadcasting." My eyes watch Seifer warily even as my mind works at a furious pace. Unpredictable at the best of times, there's no telling the lengths he might go to in this strangely agitated state.

"I said, drop it!" Seifer bursts out of his seat, staring me down with hard eyes. It's hard not to flinch away but I manage somehow, matching glare for glare. It suddenly occurs to me how big he is, towering over me this way. No time for that. Use the fear.

"Of course...the Dollet tower." With its extra-powerful signaling capability it must be worth several dozen signal routers. What does any of this have to do with Timber?

"You said you spent a summer at Timber, didn't you." I speak slowly, trying to line up the clues. Seifer looks livid but he doesn't make a move, as though held by the intensity of my eyes.

A summer at the city...that means he knows something, some relevant fact that evades me. Think, Quistis! What does Timber have? Railroads. Galbadian troops. Resistance.

An old broadcasting station.

With that, the pieces fall neatly into place, revealing the complete picture. The picture Seifer saw before anyone else and became his reason to bolt from confinement.

I let out a long, quiet breath and Seifer tenses even more if that's possible. "I see now, Seifer. I see it."

His shoulders droop, and his eyes drop to the floor. "Damn you, Trepe," he mutters.

"Galbadia's going to make a broadcast, isn't it." A broadcast so important, they couldn't leave it to the uncertainties of cable communication. So important they invaded a sovereign nation to make it happen. And even with the Dollet tower, the smaller routing stations they'd have had to erect on Timber soil must be an enormous cost.

And there's only one reason for any broadcast to be that important: The person making it.

"We've sent them against the Lifelong President of Galbadia." My words are a whisper. "Three rookie SeeDs."

-tbc

* * *

A/N: Ugh. The writing style is way too inconsistent and the chapter didn't exactly end the way I envisioned, but this is the third draft of this chapter alone and I had to let go at some point or go mad. The previous two versions of this chapter are available at my site if anyone's interested, in the notes for this chapter of this story.

And now, some thanks are in order to my reviewers:

altol: To be told I do Seifer/Quistis interaction well from the author of Fire and Ice! Wow, you've totally made my day. Hope you enjoy the new chapter!

Fyre Byrd: That's a very apt way to put it, how Seifer is driven by a force no one else understands. To me that's the essence of his character.

Jack Hanek: Thanks! I've seen extraordinarily intelligent people make below-average instructors, which is where I got the idea for flaws in Quistis' teaching method. It's just an easy trap for the very smart to fall into.

Melete: Thank you so much--I'm usually not crazy about game retellings, either, so I'm all the more flattered that you liked this one so well. I'm also happy that you liked the characterizations and relationship between Quistis and Seifer.

Ruby Tuesday: It's going to be more of a standard plotted fic from now on--the first chapter was more of a prologue. I do have some idea about what happened with Quistis' team in the parade but I'm not sure I'll write about it. It has the potential for interesting Seifer/Quistis interaction, so it's likely I will. For now I'm just trying to work my way through the Timber Station and Galbadia Garden, which are both pretty intense.

sibyl: Thanks! I just hope I don't disapppoint.

Starlight: blush Those are some of the nicest comments I've heard about my writing. Thank you. Coming from a stellar(no pun!) writer like yourself, they're especially heartwarming. And yes, Quistis watching Seifer fall under the Sorceress' spell should be an important Seifer/Quistis scene. I'm playing around with some ideas for now.


	4. The Plunge

(Cue cheesy voice) _Previously, on 'The Fall:'_

_"We've sent them against the Lifelong President of Galbadia." My words are a whisper. "Three rookie SeeDs."_

* * *

**The Fall**

**Chapter 4: The Plunge**

* * *

"So." The voice intrudes into my frozen and frantic thoughts. "Gonna let me go, Instructor?" 

Yes. What's the life of one man compared to Garden, all the Gardens? Compared to my students and charges, to Zell, to Ms. Tilmitt?

Compared to Squall?

The moment of madness is gone and I'm moving between him and the door, whip out, ready for anything. Ready, even, to protect the most self-destructive from themselves.

"Why are you even doing this?" I need to stall, maybe distract him while I plan my next move. A quick Sleep spell might do the job. I start watching him for openings while I talk. "Don't tell me you've discovered a sudden wellspring of concern for your fellow human."

"I'd tell you that, but then I'd be lying, wouldn't I." He watches me with eyes gone cold and blue, slowly drawing Hyperion. Coiled to spring the moment my concentration wavers, for instance to cast a spell. Argh. "This was my fight from the get-go, and I don't need Garden getting in the way."

"Like you didn't need a little girl getting in your way." My eyes narrow at the memory. His third field exam, a hostage extraction mission gone horribly wrong when one of the terrorists grabbed the nearest child to press a gun to her head. Seifer chose that moment to strike, coolly telling the disciplinary board later on that he had expected his GF-enhanced reflexes to win out.

"She survived, didn't she?" My blood runs cold at his nonchalant smirk. This is exactly why he failed that field exam, despite the mission's success which he spearheaded--and why I cannot let him pass, professed reasons notwithstanding. Some have called him an egotist, but I disagree. You need to care the slightest bit about yourself to be one of those. And you need to care even the slightest bit about yourself to care about anyone or anything else.

"She survived, all right. Screaming in terror, covered in a man's blood and brains." I remember how she seemed _more_ terrified of Seifer when he picked her up and carried her outside than when she'd had a gun to her head. And when she closes her eyes, I'm willing to bet good money that it's the memory of a deadly black blade coming toward her head that gives her nightmares.

He gives a dismissive snort. "Kids are tough that way. You people don't give 'em enough credit."

"Maybe we've given you too much." There is the briefest flicker in his face, of--what? Surprise? Hurt? But it's gone too quickly. I crack my whip against the window behind him, a distraction, but he doesn't bite. Instead he sends a quick fire-spell my way in that brief second. I duck, and the burst of flame passes hot and searing above my back to strike the door behind.

"That the best you can do, Seifer?" The chain lash hurtles back the next instant, the retrieval motion as comfortable and easy as breathing.

"Not quite," he murmurs, and strikes in close. Two can play the quick-casting game, however. The painful cold of a Blizzara spell builds up at my fingertips, and he's blasted backwards toward the window before he can reach me. He shivers as he leans against the glass trying to get his bearings; an affinity to fire magic has left him with a particular vulnerability to ice-elemental spells, I've found.

"Give it up, Seifer. We'll find some other way to deal with this." The best part is, I don't even have to beat him. All I need to do is keep him away from the door until backup comes, and the knowledge is reflected in his face. Then the polite female voice over the speaker system again.

"_Attention, please, passengers._"

"I told you, Trepe-" he raises Hyperion again. "It's _my_ fight." Fire runs along his arm and energy slowly builds up on the blade as he spins the nine-pound gunblade in a hand.

"_This train will presently resume its normal speed for the remainder of the journey to Timber._"

I will never understand how he can Break, time and again, in almost perfect physical condition, but that's beside the point. If he thinks his Limit Break can move me from this door-

"_Thank you for your patience._"

Then he turns around and smashes Hyperion into the window.

There is absolute silence for one split second, the calm of the vacuum. The next moment the glass, fortified to withstand monster charges and more, screams and _explodes_ outward.

"No!" My cry is lost in the banshee shriek of air that rushes into the cabin. I try to grab him with my whip, but can't get the necessary momentum in this maelstrom. It's all I can do to place Shell on myself when Seifer lifts his hand and an inferno erupts around me. Hair wind-whipped and eyes watering, I'm still struggling against the wind when Seifer waves and shouts something that might have been "Bye, Instructor" or "Fuck you." And then he jumps.

When I work my way to the window and lean out he is straightening up from his roll on the grass next to the tracks, shielded by the blue glitter of a Protect spell. The train picks up full speed, and Seifer's cheerfully waving form is already a tiny dot by the time I'm forced to step away from the shattered window. Yet another fine I'll have to pay at Timber station.

I can't follow him outside now, even with a Protect spell, if I wish to arrive at Timber in one piece. Which is exactly how he planned the timing of it all, of course. I could almost admire his deviousness if it weren't all so infuriating.

Well, at least I know where he's going. Waiting at the train station is no guarantee--I have to assume he knows more than one way into the city. He's shaken me for the time being. But once this very important broadcast starts...

Oh, I wouldn't miss it for the world. My thoughts are grim as I try to put my hair and my clothes in some semblance of order.

* * *

This isn't my day. I nearly had to resort to violence to curtail the lecture I received at the Timber train station. My worldly wealth less fifteen thousand gil, I had to weather one of those minitrains through the city that are so charming to watch--but once one gets on turn out to be crowded, uncomfortable, and poorly ventilated. 

The square before the old broadcasting station isn't quite what I expected. Some of the expected festiveness is there, of course; this is, after all, the first television broadcast in almost twenty years. Some hundreds of Timber citizens have gathered, eyes fixed on the white noise-filled screen that dominates the front of the building.

But the excitement is dampened a great deal by the unsmiling presence of soldiers standing guard. Their tense animosity and the sullen resentment of the civilians are both almost palpable in the air. This is not a happy city, and one gets the sense that sooner or later something will have to give.

None of this concerns me for the immediate present. I scan the crowd quickly for either the Timber team or Seifer, with no luck. Even if they were here, of course, I doubt there is much they could do against the tight security. Maybe both the team and Seifer gave up, which is probably for the best. The Timber team are too inexperienced to see the larger implications, and Seifer-

Screams start somewhere in the crowd, and a shot rings out.

I seem to have found him. And Hyne forbid he do the reasonable thing. _This is _my _fight,_ I hear him say. My feet are pounding hard on the pavement towards the commotion, against the flow of frightened men and women fleeing the other way.

A soldier grunts as he staggers into me. I sidestep quickly and sure enough, there's Seifer, knocking a sabre from one Galbadian's hand and slamming a steel-toed boot into another's solar plexus. I lash out with my whip--only to kick up bits of pavement when he dodges. Before I can try again he slams Hyperion's pistol hilt brutally across on the last standing guard's jaw, brushes past the crumpling form into the front entrance of the station.

The afternoon sunlight is abruptly cut off as I run through the doors into the station proper, past one sprawled Galbadian, then another, up two flights of old stairs that give hollow clangs--and I am upon him. A soldier comes tumbling down the stairs, and I flatten myself against the railing just in time to avoid him. On the landing Seifer has a hand on the metal door to the studio.

"Seifer." He flicks a cool green gaze over his shoulder at me, shoulder still tensed to push that door open and plunge into the waiting chaos beyond. "It doesn't have to be like this." I have tried everything to deflect him from this course, every last tactic in or out of the book. They failed, every last one. I am left with nothing but pleading, that so much potential, so much _life_ can't possibly end like this.

"You'd rather see it in ruins?" His eyes turn to flint and his voice goes hard. Our childhood home, our school, our world as we knew it--proud spires and whispering fountains, the cool walls all gone. No way to contact the Timber team other than barging through this door, not knowing if they're already on their way, knowing it's so much safer if someone else does the job, someone Garden never sent.

For the first time in my life I have no answer at all. I am lost in the unyielding truth in his eyes, in this confluence of destinies beyond control and reason.

"There they are!" The soldiers are upon us, and without another word Seifer disappears through the studio door. Numbly I follow, tossed by uncertainty and doubt.

Inside, the cameras are already on and soldiers hover just out of camera range near a portly man behind the podium. The lights are too bright, the world at a crazy angle, and nothing, nothing will ever be right in the world again.

Seifer doesn't hesitate, he never hesitates. He surges forward, movement fluid as water--a rib cracks audibly as he lashes out with the flat of his blade, the soldier doubling over in pain. Two rush into camera range to grab him from behind while a third approaches to restrain him, only to be kicked down, flailing arms taking the camera crashing down with him.

I finally find my voice, somehow, even here in the grip of a nightmare I can neither stop nor control. "Stay back!" Don't they know when they're outmatched?

The soldiers holding Seifer are shaken off easily, and in the same breath the President of Galbadia finds the black blade of Hyperion shoved under his chin. Then Seifer holds Deling before him like a shield, the heat of battle blazing in his eyes. A beast of prey stands before me, an audible snarl on its lips, feral, hunted. Cornered.

"For the last time," I raise my voice above the tumult, "stand down! You're only going to provoke him." Never predictable nor quite stable, there is no imagining where he might turn when trapped. I snap out an order for the Timber team to join us, perhaps the only people in the city who might be able to help me subdue an armed and junctioned Seifer. Preferably before Deling's head is rolling on the floor.

Slowly the nightmare comes into focus as I think in familiar terms of tactics and strategies, flipping abruptly from dream into reality. The reality that those of us in this room, and every other person in the world, will have to live with. I am riding the waves and terrified where the slightest slip might take me, or all of us.

"Look, young man, let the President go." A red-suited officer steps up next to me, his voice low and soothing. "This can be resolved by words."

"What words?" There is a dangerous gleam in Seifer's eyes. " 'We'll be playing football with Deling's head unless you shut the fuck up?' "

The officer flinches and looks to me for help.

"We need to restrain him." Hyne's in the details, Trepe. Will the Timber team ever get here?

Just then the much-abused studio door flies open and Squall bursts in, followed by Zell and Ms. Tilmitt.

"What," Squall's voice is low with barely-repressed anger, "do you think you're doing?"

"It's obvious, ain't it?" Seifer nods to Deling. "What are you planning to do with this guy?"

_Careful,_ I sign, trying to be as discreet as possible. _The camera..._ Seifer doesn't take notice, however, too occupied with Deling and Squall.

"I get it!" Zell slams a fist into his palm. "You're Rinoa's-"

Seifer flinches at the name, and Deling does the same when the jerky blade comes dangerously close to beheading him. "Shut your damn mouth! You chicken!"

"He broke out of the disciplinary room," I can't risk anymore hand signs which might be analyzed and recognized as Garden battle language, "injuring many in the process." I have seldom prayed before but right now I am, with all my might. Please, please try to guess at the reason for the escape. If they see it they'll know not to implicate anyone in their words, least of all Garden.

My heart soars at the thoughtful look on Squall's face when Zell bursts out: "You stupid IDIOT!"

"Be quiet," Squall says without using names, telling me he's realized at least a small part of what I tried to say.

But Zell is beyond restraint. "Instructor, I know!" I open my mouth to warn him against titles, but my jaw goes slack and my mind blank at his next words. "You're gonna take this stupid idiot back to Garden, right?"

"Shut up! NO!" Even before Squall's shout Zell's hands are at his mouth in panic.

My hands are shaking, my breath comes in ragged gasps as Deling quietly pronounces his ultimatum. With Garden operatives taking action against the President, Galbadia would not only be enabled but _forced_ to retaliate. The black waves of consequence, of one single slip in that moment in time, rise up to engulf us all.

Unless... My eyes turn to meet Seifer's. Unless someone else took the blame. Someone not sent by Garden...a rogue that Garden had no control over.

A split second of perfect understanding, and he breaks the gaze. "Nice going, Chicken-wuss! You and your stupid big mouth." Zell all but withers under the derision in his tormentor's look. "Take care of this mess, Instructor and Mr. Leader!" Seifer pulls Deling along through a door at one side, and I follow--the responsible SeeD rushing to save the President from the hands of the evil renegade. Once more riding the currents, and this time I cannot afford to fail.

The certainty is bitter and sharp, that if I have to kill in that room not to slip I will do it. The time is past for right or wrong, for justice and pity and all the rest. We have come to the time of survival, when first we live. And then we ask the questions.

Seifer stands with Deling at the far end of what appears to be a prop room, gazing fixedly at the wall before him. Something--wrong--in the air here, a cloying scent, tension like a pulled string. A taste of dark urges, of tainted sweetness.

What is this?

Then I see the apparition, a woman standing before Seifer and yet...not. It's not the otherworldly costume or the bird's-face mask, it's the way the black vortex in the room seems to emerge from her and swirl into her in the memory of a thousand screaming nightmares, the way she arrests the gaze like nothing human can or should. The fear is primal, the attraction--irresistible.

Seifer senses it too. "Stay back!" I rush forward to help. No matter what the strange turns in this endless day, I could not leave him to face that thing alone.

And it takes me in the gut then, a hand that grabs hold in some indefinable place within and _squeezes_ until I am shuddering and gasping with the wrongness of it, if I could move at all. A heavy drop to my knees is all I can manage.

Seifer screams again for the thing to stay back. But he cannot look away, nor can he turn. A low purr trembles through the room on some invisibile taut string.

"Poor, poor boy..."

And damnation.

-tbc


	5. Walking Away

Disclaimer: Nope, still don't own 'em.

* * *

**The Fall**

**Chapter 5: Walking Away**

* * *

"Shut _up_!" 

The single cry tears through the cloying, almost unbreathable air. A little mobility returns to my limbs, the terrible numbness receding just a bit. My heart soars; that's the Seifer I know--defiant no matter what the odds, unbending, unbendable. I feel like laughing at the way the air clears a little, I want to cheer on the boy who would stand up to the monsters who have crawled out from under his bed.

The bird-masked figure says something then, but I do not understand the words. There is only a tightening of an invisible web in the air, and the brief brightness of Seifer's desperate defiance flickers out. My feet scrabble uselessly on the floor as I try to stand. Seifer hears and his head flinches as if to turn. But he can't turn, not with the woman holding his eyes on a string of dark fascination.

"I'm not... Stop calling me a boy."

My heart sinks at how lost he sounds as he shakes his head, even Deling forgotten under Hyperion's black blade. The web, the unseen noose tightens once again and the pressure is impossible to fight. The floor is cold as I sink against it, and chilled perspiration slides down my back. Seifer, I try to call, but it's useless. I hear nothing but quick and irregular heartbeat for a moment, trying to stop what I don't know. And then the air explodes.

"I am not a BOY!"

I catch my breath as something intangible wavers, then cracks and shatters. Reality fractures into lines like the threads of a web. The fragments fall away, each an image, too quickly to see and understand. I only glimpse a few, stray grains of sand glinting in the sun as they run through my fingers on a beach so long ago--

_A hundred million little pieces of light are in the air as he falls, so beautiful... He reaches for them, those pretty fragments of color, but he's falling and they are not, and his hand closes on empty air. They fall into the blue as he falls away, and the sharp little bits of light watch uncaring and the ground wrenches up close too close too close_

_A hard blow to his face and his back is to the wall, the wind rushing out of him. He's made her angry again. He tries to say sorry and doesn't know what to apologize for, but already the slender white hand with the red-painted nails is in the air again-_

You ain't my Ma! _She's caught him again running from her home, the black-haired lady in black. She doesn't understand, he has to go back so he can be found. He aches with the knowledge and knows he has to get away, somehow, from the lighthouse by the sea, back to that street corner in Deling. But the lady holds out a hand and he can't take his eyes away from that calm, warm gaze, so sad._ Come with me, Seifer...

"...to a place of no return." I flinch, trying to blink the strange images out, but it doesn't work. Only the voice is real and hard, the acoustics in the room giving it an eery echo... Different tone, same voice. Why do they have the same voice? My eyes are hot with tears and I have no idea why. Then the onslaught of images drowns out every other thought.

_His scalp burns as the ungentle hand yanks as if to pull out all his hair. He's being bad again, he knows that and he's sorry, but it hurts and he's so _scared-- Look at you, _jeers the slurred voice, the stink of her bottles so strong he retches. Look at you, boy. Boy, with girly hair. Then the drunken and lazy click-clack of the scissors, sometimes in empty air, sometimes in his scalp until he's bleeding. Little wisps of reddish golden hair tickle his face as they fall._

_She is silent as she watches them go, raven hair rising like smoke in the wind. She raises a hand, a sad smile on her face, and he's turning around and running to her one last time, throwing his arms around her waist. _I'll never forget you, Matron.

"...say farewell..."

Wait here._ Her long golden hair falls across his face as she bends over him, the long strands mingling into his own butchered hair. She grips his shoulders, a little too hard so that he winces._ Wait here, okay? Be good, boy. _She turns and walks away from him where he stands alone on an unsavory street corner in inner-city Deling. He tries to stand still, wanting to be good... But he calls to her as she walks away, can't help but call to her, and hates himself for the weakness. She smiles mockingly over a shoulder, lips red as fresh blood._ Be good.

_He trembles with the effort of stopping himself else he'd go running after her like a baby, crying to her not to leave him alone. He's a big boy, and a good boy. This is what he tells himself as he watches her retreating back. She turns a corner and is gone from sight. He listens to her receding footsteps for a long time, or tells himself that he can hear it, waiting for it to end. For her to come back and tell him how good he's been._-->

I come back with a rush to the cold dankness of the dressing room. The woman turns her back to Seifer, and suddenly the prop room's wall is shimmering and rippling before her. For a split second it's like I see her through Seifer's eyes, the slender retreating form... He releases Deling with the air of a child discarding an old toy. As Deling scrambles away Seifer turns to me, his green eyes lit with a mad kind of joy, as though he's found something he has searched for so long. Don't, I try to say as he waves farewell, his smile disturbingly peaceful.

Rushing footsteps from behind and I can't even shout a warning before the woman raises a hand and my students, too, go tumbling paralyzed to the floor. I can only watch, unable to act, as Seifer turns away from us. He won't just stand there and watch her leave. Not this time.

The shimmering wall swallows her form as she steps gracefully through, then his, and abruptly air rushes back into the room. The dreadful sense of wrongness, the web of that loathsome magnetism lifts. I can breathe freely again, and find that I can move. My legs are unsteady when I stand and run blindly to the wall where he disappeared.

"Seifer." The dressing room wall is solid now and cold, with nothing to distinguish it from any normal piece of masonry. But only a moment ago two people stepped through it--was it all an illusion? Then which is reality, that insane dream or this remembering? I shiver at the memory and instinctively push the thought away. There was madness here and it still lingers like a bad taste on the tongue, it was madness I saw in Seifer's face when that... woman-thing was through with him.

I turn wearily back to the others, and see the same wordless questions are reflected in their eyes. What _is_ she? Where is he?

Running footsteps break the silence. "Hey everyone!"

She breaks in on our confusion, all fresh-faced excitement and coltish nervousness. The girl from the graduation ball, I remember now. Or rather, how could I forget? She catches her breath for a moment, hands on knees.

"Where's Seifer?" Her eyes go uncertainly around the room as she straightens, her hands going to a ring she wears on a chain around her neck. She was wearing that even at the graduation ball, I recall.

"We don't know," Squall's answer is flat and final, and I feel like smacking him upside the head when the girl's face falls.

"He'll be okay, right?" She casts each of us a hopeful glance that none of us can return with equal hope. She swallows, then turns and flees outside.

I run after her and catch up at the bottom of the emergency stairs. "Rinoa?" I venture, guessing Zell was referring to this girl earlier in the broadcast room--it feels like so long ago, yet can't have been more than ten minutes.

She turns to me, a touch of moisture in her wide chocolate-brown eyes and one of her hands holding the ring at her throat in a white-knuckled grip. At a loss for words at the sight of her upset, I simply say the first thing that comes to mind. "Quistis Trepe. I was Squall and Seifer's instructor at Garden." I hold out my hand.

She barely manages to take it, then blurts out the words: "What happened?"

"We're not sure." He walked into a wall and disappeared. "There was a strange woman, and..." I shrug helplessly. I remember the miasma of fear, the strange images, and have to suppress a shudder.

"Oh." Rinoa looks as confused as I feel. "Will he be okay?" Her voice is very small as she repeats the earlier question. She seems so vulnerable as she stands there, almost child-like in her open innocence. Whatever her background, the girl has led a very sheltered life and is clearly in over her head. My heart goes out to her.

"I'm sure he will be." I give my shot at an encouraging smile. "Seifer's nothing if not tough."

"I know!" She smiles back, if a little shakily, her eyes wide as a puppy's. "He's really amazing, isn't he?" Her tone is obviously more hero-worship than romantic interest, and I'm relieved--and then kick myself for that.

"Rinoa!" I whip around as man in a railroad worker's overalls rushes towards us out of an alley. Instinctively I'm on guard, but Rinoa runs forward to meet the man.

"Cory! What-"

"The base was destroyed by those goons!" The young man gasps out, bending down with hands on knees to catch his breath. "You have to get out of Timber, fast."

"What about everyone else?" Rinoa's hand goes back up to the ring.

Cory smiles in spite of the situation. "We're used to lying low. Just take care of yourself, okay?"

"I will! You too, Cory." The man waves and disappears the way he came.

"Well, it looks like seeing each other a while longer, Rinoa." It's been a long day, but I try to keep my voice and heart light. I almost can't seem to help it around this girl. "You can leave Timber with us." Whether we can make it to Balamb Garden or end up heading to Galbadia Garden instead, Rinoa is a SeeD client and is guaranteed safety in any Garden.

"Would that be okay?" Her eyes light up with hope--she must have been a lot more lost than she lets on.

"Of course. You're a client. It's your privilege to order us around." She breaks into a grin at that.

"Seifer always said it's an easy life, just following orders without having to think..." she trails off, her smile fading away at the reminder. The light mood turns pensive as we both wonder what's become of him. I'm no less in the dark than Rinoa is, for having witnessed his strange departure. Already the memory has taken on the surreal quality of a dream, the woman's achingly familiar voice, her words I couldn't make sense of, Seifer's sudden change of heart from alarm to obedience.

I see again the blond woman walking away, around a corner and out of sight... But never out of mind. Somehow I feel like crying, and I know the emotions aren't all my own.

Footsteps clatter down the rickety fire escape behind us, and presently Squall and the others descend into view. The distraction is welcome, but my attention drifts while Rinoa fills the others in.

_Seifer's nothing if not tough._

But will he be tough enough, this time around? There are too many unknowns, too many unanswered questions. I can only hope he'll be all right long enough for Garden to get him out.

Stay alive, Cadet. That's an order.

I can almost hear the snort of laughter he'd have given at the words, and there's comfort in the thought as I hurry with the others into an alley, in search of whatever fragile safety we might find among the streets of Timber.

* * *

Bleh. I can't get this exactly the way I want it, but decided to throw it out there first. Thank you very much for all the kind reviews, they got me started on this project again. And of course, the bad haircut scene is an idea lifted straight from altol's magnificent Fire and Ice.  



	6. Compromises

**Chapter 6: Compromises**

A train ride, a trek through the Galbadian countryside, and a strangely life-like dream later, we finally stand at the front gates of Galbadia Garden. It's an imposing, fiery red structure, sometimes referred as the Garden of Fire in contrast to B-Garden as the Garden of Water.

But I don't have time to admire architecture. Not this time.

"Could you leave this one up to me?" I turn to the others at the entrance, careful to keep the urgency out of my voice. "I've been here several times, and I know the headmaster well." I look to Squall; I don't want to give the impression that I'm stealing his command, his first at that, but I must speak to Headmaster Martine or lose my wits.

Squall nods, and I turn hastily away, mumbling something about explaining our situation. I wonder how many of them realize that my motives aren't quite that--Maddock Martine knows Garden regulation as well as I do, and will tolerate Rinoa's presence despite what Galbadia might say. His ties to the Galbadian military are quite well known, but Martine knows to use the Gardens' principle of neutrality when it suits him.

No, our situation needs no explaining. What I really need is information, the sort that only Martine with his inside sources in the G-Army can provide. And if there's a chance, the merest chance that we can still help Seifer...

Five hours since his disappearance. I can only hope it's not too late for him.

But if it is?

My steps stutter, then pause in the middle of the elegant, high-ceilinged foyer. It's all just a little surreal, the students who pass me by with politely curious glances, the overhead lighting, the barely-heard murmur of ventilators and electricity. My head spins.

It's with an effort that I resume my steps towards the stairs at the far end of the lobby, trying to be brisk and businesslike while terrible fear leaves me shaking in my boots. The hollow clang of my boots on the stairs bring to mind a climb to the gallows--

Stop it. Right this instant.

I give myself a mental shake, stop, and try again. A clipped, yet unhurried pace carries me to the second floor. A calm, assured half-smile for anyone who meets my eye. Quick right-hand turn before the door to the waiting room and I stand before the elevator to the third floor, to the master room.

Please...

A brief prayer in that thought, and the hope is just as painful as the fear. Torn, I let the elevator carry me up towards a message I both dread and anticipate.

A soft _ping_ signals my arrival and Headmaster Martine turns to face me as the elevator doors slide open. He stands before his desk, outlined against the vista of the dry Monterosa plateau outside the wide window.

"He's dead, Miss Trepe," comes the familiar tone, military to the marrow and as dry as the lands that surround this Garden of Fire. "He was classified renegade, and no Garden was implicated." I pause on my way out the elevator and lean against the wall next to it, trying to breathe. No victory has ever tasted quite so ashen. "I'm sorry." A flicker in his impassive eyes, infathomably deep above gaunt cheekbones.

He gestures to a chair and I stagger towards it as though the air has turned to water. About as breathable, too. I sink into the cushioned seat and manage to take deep, silent breaths.

This was why I came alone to see the Headmaster, when coming with Squall would have been the proper thing to do. I distrusted myself to react calmly to the news. With justification, as it turned out.

An assistant enters unobtrusively to serve tea, orange pekoe just as I like it, and I take a few calming sips until I can speak again.

"What... happened, Headmaster?"

"He was interrogated, of course." 'Interrogation.' A weak euphemism, especially in the Galbadian context. "He steadfastly denied that Garden condoned his act, much less ordered it. Asking why else would Garden send four operatives to stop him." I close my eyes briefly. "They never saw anyone take so much questioning without cracking."

"Yes, that sounds-" My voice breaks, and I have to take another sip from my cup. "That certainly sounds like Seifer."

"They let it go at that--they can afford no direct confrontation with Garden at this stage, if possible." So they resolved the matter by one death, and no more. As Seifer thought. As he knew.

"Yes, especially when they want cooperation." I meet his eyes. "Yours most of all, Headmaster."

He scowls. So the rumor that the Sorceress wants this Garden as her base of operations is true, after all. And knowing Martine, he has a thing or two to say about that. Or a thing or two to do.

"That matter will be taken care of." A dismissive wave. "Your orders from Balamb are here."

So it has begun.

I have to wonder if the orders really are intended for us, the party from Balamb. The timeline doesn't fit. Did Balamb even have time to learn about our escape from Timber to G-Garden? They might have guessed, given standard Garden operating procedure, but it seems just a little convenient that we would arrive just in time to receive orders to "take care of" the matter of the Sorceress.

Is shrewd, unscrupulous Martine covering his own back, thrusting the orders on our shoulders? So that Galbadia Garden would be safe no matter what the outcome, while Balamb Garden takes the fall should the plan backfire?

Well, no matter. I have no way to challenge him, and truth be told I have no qualms against taking revenge against the witch who lured Seifer away to his death. Come with me to a place of no return, indeed. My hands clench into hard fists as I stand and leave the room, to give the news of Balamb Garden's safety to my comrades, to Zell most of all who has been guiltridden all through the journey here.

* * *

"..Beyond troubled. Well, he wasn't really a bad guy," I finish lamely, before I can ramble on and on. Why tell the whole truth when it would serve no other purpose than to make Zell feel worse? It won't bring Seifer back.

I consider saying something when Squall has an uncharacteristic outburst and leaves the room, but I do not have the energy to follow him, or to try to trace a story I barely understand myself. _(Go talk to a wall.)_ Let it be my burden to bear. I lean back on the couch, trying to get a little more rest before we are called on again.

I will ever understand why Seifer did what he did, when he seemed as uncaring of Garden as he was of the rest of the world. To the last he defies my expectations, leaving me off-balance and unsettled with no idea what to think.

Perhaps this is the peace he has found, the only kind he could find in a life of violence both internal and external. I shy away from the memory of blood-red smiles, of a woman walking away from a dirty street corner, of a strange-familiar voice that makes me hurt with longing. The last glimpses of a life--_beyond troubled_--that I will know nothing of, in the end.

_I'm going to die like that, Quisty._ A boy lying on a beach, the night sky alight above him. Is this another of the memories or hallucinations, courtesy of the witch? But why is my name in it? Will the Sorceress affect my mind just as she drove Seifer to his death?

I gaze dully out the window at the late afternoon sky above the Monterosa plateau. Perhaps the Sorceress has compromised me somehow and I am a danger to this mission and those around me. At the moment I am too tired to care. For some reason I think of fireworks, and feel suddenly like crying.

* * *

Wow, it's been forever since I updated, graduation and settling down in a new job really sucked up my time. But the reviews I got in my inbox reminded me I had this project going, too, and I am determined to finish it even if the updates are short. Thank you so much for the kind reviews, and I hope you enjoy!


	7. Interlude: Breaking Point

**Interlude: Breaking Point**

_Why am I here, again?_

_Because you're a fucking moron, Almasy,_ came the ready answer.

Well, it was good to know the world still operated along normal parameters. Or at least he did. Marginally.

There was something about pain that made him crave cigarettes. Maybe nicotine lessened pain, he didn't know and didn't care. All he knew was that he needed a smoke, even though he didn't do it very often.

Or maybe he just needed something to distract himself with.

He was guessing he'd been given some sort of nerve enhancer in addition to the usual veridicals. The _mode d'operation_ of Galbadian-style questioning, from the beatings to electric shocks, hurt worse than they possibly could. Every nerve ending seemed fired up to maximum, stretched to breaking point and ready to react and overreact to any stimulus, even as they throbbed and burned with remembered pain. Yeah, definitely nerve enhancers. God, he wanted a smoke.

_Overbright lights hurt his eyes, and the questions come from everywhere and nowhere like the voice of God, inescapable and overwhelming._

_Who sent you?_

_Was this a direct order from Cid Kramer?_

_What were your orders?_

He blinked and shook his head: That was done for the time being. The cell was dark, and quiet aside from his own breathing. Those guys had known what they were doing. Unfortunately for them it didn't work quite as well if the questionee knew exactly what the methods were. Didn't mean it couldn't wear him down. They'd been warned about this in interrogation resistance training. _Just because you know it's a psychological ploy, does not mean you will feel any less grateful when the "good cop" offers you a cigarette and gives you a pat on the back._

Cigarettes, again. They offer him some and he'd be a blubbering wreck, too. Never mind he'd been fucking _grading_ them on their performance during those times he could think straight, he'd still be grateful.

_Grateful enough to lie?_

That gave him pause. The hard part here was, he didn't know which it was they wanted to hear out of him. That Garden did send him so they really could go against Garden, or that he was a rogue so they could avoid a head-to-head for now?

He bent double with sudden cramping pains, watched as blood dripped from his mouth to the stained concrete floor below. Any minute now even this respite would be over, and they controlled when and how. That was how they'd wear him down, breaking him bit by bit. It was the essence of having someone absolutely in your power, why getting caputured alive was such a grave tactical blunder, _but she had promised him help and the world and dreams of fire..._

He closed his throat, letting his scream of frustration escape as a hoarse hiss. With the nerve enhancers pumping through his system, leaning forward against his handcuffs made the metal burn like dry ice. He let that distract him for the moment. Distraction was another technique he'd learned during the goddamn interrogation resistance course, which was SeeD-only and he never understood why he'd had to take it. He had a theory that it had to do with the number of times he'd pissed Aki off. His wrists felt like they were falling off, so he leaned back in his chair again.

Yeah, if he lied and said he was a Garden operative they might have something to hold over Garden later, even if they didn't go to full-scale fighting. They could blow his brains out or just give out that he was dead and keep him here at their leisure, trying to squeeze whatever potentially useful Garden information out of him until they decided he was useless. Then he could get killed or just rot in some hellhole at their mercy...

Seifer had broken out in a cold sweat. Suddenly the prospect of his brains spattered across a wall didn't seem all that unattractive. Maybe he could cooperate enough to get the use of his hands back, steal a gun.

The door opened and his heart skipped a beat. Cigarette-bearing good cop, or... Seifer twisted around in the stiff-backed chair, trying to get a look.

_Her._

She seemed as out of place in the filthy interrogation cell as, well, a queen in a dark and filthy dungeon. (Seifer's brain wasn't big on metaphor at the moment.) She walked slowly, holding her skirts as she passed a spot of blood on the floor. Seifer found himself entranced by her calm poise, following her with his sight until she stood before him once again. The woman who'd promised him everything. The woman who had delivered him to the waiting arms of the Galbadians.

"You." His growl didn't have all the venom he wanted it to. He could not take his eyes off her, the way she seemed to draw the meagre light in the room to herself and shine with a dark radiance of her own, how whipers and the faintest of music seemed to follow her when she walked. He shook his head fiercely, trying to clear it. The effort left his head ringing; he tried to hold very still until it passed. Yet his eyes still sought her out, the slim curve of her torso, the graceful line of her shoulders and throat, and the bird mask...

"Show me your face," he whispered, hoarse with pain and unexpected emotion.

"You do not know who I am, boy?" There was a bloody curve of a smile in her voice. Something unpleasant flashed behind his eyelids, disappeared too quickly to register.

_(A single mocking, over-the-shoulder smile; the quick glitter of teeth against cheap crimson._ Be good._)_

"Told you... I'm not..." He was almost pleading, his thoughts going in circles. He found it hard to think clearly, not when her very presence seemed to hold him in a dark, comforting warmth that tugged at him even as it repulsed him.

"You have forgotten." The sorrow in her voice made him shiver inside. She came a step closer, and reached out a long, slender hand to hold his face up by his chin. She was gentle, but he flinched when she brushed against earlier bruises and because the touch--too familiar--opened up something inside, a bottomless pit he didn't want to look into. He couldn't move, not even his eyes as he stared at his faint, distorted reflection in the bird mask. "They have made you forget."

"No- what-" _I'll never forget you, Matron._ His feet pounding against a beach as he ran to her one last time. Long hair covering him like a dark curtain as she bent to embrace him for the last time, warm and safe and sweet with the smell of lilacs. "Get out of my mind," he rasped out, barely audible even to himself.

"I have come for you." The bird's face glimmered and was gone, and his reflection disappeared abruptly to be replaced by the face of the woman behind the mask. His heart pounded in his ears like a desperate trapped thing as he was dragged to the edge of the pit and flung over, into a flood of broken images and impressions he did not want or understand. _Come with me._ The woman reaching out for him, her eyes gentle. _Be good._ Long red nails digging into his shoulders.

And over and over again, the retreating back as the woman with blond hair and the red smile walked away from him while everything in him screamed to follow, but she had told him to stay, she said she would come back-

Warm arms caught him then, out of the disjointed nightmare and into solid reality. He leaned blindly against her shoulder, breathing the scent of lilacs. She steadied him and held him in the here and now, the one thing he could cling to in a pain-filled darkness. He had learned to trust her in that place beyond memory, and she would keep him safe even if he was alone in the world. As he had been. As he was now.

"I've come back for you, don't you see?" Warm lips pressed against his temple as she held him close. "I promised I would. You've been good, Seifer. You've been very good."

He sighed and leaned against her, letting her presence soothe away the pain. She had come for him. _Cigarettes,_ a part of his mind said groggily. _Good cop._ He didn't care. Long hair fell across his eyes, darkening his sight. "Thank you," he whispered.

* * *

A sentence in the last paragraph was inspired by Swinburne's _Dolores (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs)_:

Thou shalt hush him with heavy caresses,  
With music that scares the profane;  
Thou shalt darken his eyes with thy tresses,  
Our Lady of Pain.

And of course, Edea's smelling of lilacs comes straight out of Fire and Ice. I think it was in some other fics, too.


	8. The Fall

**Chapter 7: The Fall**

The city of Deling is in pandemonium, and things are going smoothly so far.

It was unexpected that the Sorceress could summon a shield quickly enough to repel sniper fire, but the plan has already accounted for that possibility. Squall is going in to take out the Sorceress personally, and Irvine will be his support. Once Selphie, Zell, and I join them we should be more than enough to take her on.

Hopefully.

There is an uncomfortable crawling sensation in my mind that we may have underestimated the Sorceress's power, but this is not the time for action, not doubt. Our feet pound frantically down the seemingly endless metal steps of the gatehouse tower.

We reach the end of the stairs and open the door to emerge into the city square, into the thick of the fleeing, gawking, pointing, terrified crowd that mills about the closed gates. But there it is looming above them, the Sorceress's parade float. I can just make out Squall and Rinoa closing in on the Sorceress while Irvine covers them both with his shotgun from further back.

As I make my way I watch the shadowy form of the Sorceress rise, a swirl of icy blue enveloping her form. The air grows colder as we get closer. I unfurl my whip as I run, eyes on the float above as I slip through the jostling crowd.

Irvine aims and fires, but I know even before the shot is complete that it will fail. He is too hurried and shaken, and the shot goes wide. Squall leaps aside, quick and lithe as a cat, simultaneously giving himself room to sidestep the Sorceress's intended line of fire and drawing attention away from Irvine and Rinoa with the sudden movement. In that split second I read his moves, approve the shrewdness of it, and become sick with fear for him.

Then the air explodes with magic, and the speed and ferocity of it is more than either Squall or I could have anticipated or abated. The air is suddenly sharp and deathly cold, and a streak of blue flies at Squall, _impaling_ him so that he staggers back, hanging midair for an impossible eternity-

The breath rushes out of me and I stop dead in my tracks (dead) while Squall tumbles back and Zell and Selphie run past me, their shouts blurring into the incomprehensible roar in my ears.

"Squall!!"

Rinoa's terrified shriek snaps me out of it and into action. I force my feet to move again, rushing past both Selphie and Zell the last few steps to the base of the float. Squall's weight slams heavily against me as I catch him from his fall, but I have prepared for that and brace myself against him. I am careful to avoid the shaft of ice lodged in his chest as I lower him to the ground, but it is already dissolving. I can almost admire the vicious cleverness of the attack, leaving an open wound with no obstruction to bleeding or infection.

"Is he-" Zell comes to a skidding stop to crouch next to us while Selphie keeps on the alert on our other side, nunchuks at the ready.

"Elixir," I snap out as I ready a Full-Life spell and press my hands over Squall's wound. His blood rushes out over my hands, warm and sudden. He needs to stay alive until he sees a doctor, and there's no choice but to pump him full of cure spells and potions even if they will tax him physically. Zell takes out and opens the clear bottle in one motion, tips the whole thing into Squall's mouth and massages his throat and chin to make him swallow. At the same time the blue blaze of Full-life surrounds him, jolting his limp body.

"Seize them." The low but darkly melodious sound is clear over the din, the Sorceress's irresistible and maddeningly familiar voice. I look up just in time to see Rinoa being dragged away from the railing of the float above us. Shots ring out on the float, announcing Irvine's resistance, but I am readying another Full-life and helpless to go to their aid unless I abandon Squall. Zell makes Squall drink another full bottle of potion and I can see he is stabilizing.

"We have company," Selphie sings out with an edge to her voice. Galbadian soldiers are detaching from the shadows of buildings to carry out the Sorceress's order, guns and sabres glinting in the dim light.

"Selphie, guard. Zell, go." As Selphie steps closer to Squall and me, Zell springs up with a cry and launches himself at the nearest soldier, dispatching him in seconds in a flurry of blows. Then he turns to the next.

A Galbadian shot ricochets off a glowing blue shield when Selphie tosses a Protect Stone into the air, and sabre-wielding soldiers who get too close quickly fall to her nunchuks. I concentrate on the final Full-life, about as much as Squall can bear before his heart overloads and the last needed to stabilize his condition. My breaths come in quick gasps from casting exhaustion and my wrists ache from the beginning of mag poisoning, but I can do this.

There are footsteps above us, up on the float, heavy and deliberate. Selphie will take care of it and I need to concentrate for the spell, but something about it bothers me. My fingers begin to glow blue as the magic comes, along with a pounding heartbeat and a splitting headache. I close my eyes and try to control my pacing. Fail this casting, and I won't have the energy for another.

There is a soft thud in front of me and a whoosh of displaced air. I open my eyes, and trapped by the magic building up inside me, I can do nothing but watch as a tall blond man in a silver-grey coat straightens from his landing crouch. His eyes pass over Squall and me, dismissing us, before turning to Selphie as she knocks an approaching G-Soldier out cold and whirls around to face the disturbance.

"Squad B captain?" Her eyes widen, though her stance is instinctively defensive.

"Messenger Girl." Seifer brings up Hyperion in an underhand strike. Selphie leaps nimbly back, but Hyperion's return strike hits her hard on the side of the head and his foot slams into her midsection before she can recover. I grit my teeth as wavering concentration threatens a magical countercurrent, something I do _not_ want with a spell as powerful as Full-life. Selphie crumples to the ground, and the soldiers rush in to bind her.

"What the- Selphie! Seifer?!" Zell must have made a move in our direction, because Seifer steps deliberately and swiftly behind me. The tip of a gunblade is suddenly cold and heavy against the back of my head.

"Wouldn't do that if I were you, Chicken Wuss." I dare not move, or even follow the blade with my gaze. My wrists burn with unspent magic that could flow in the wrong direction and quite possibly kill me at any moment. Squall is losing color again, his breathing growing shallow.

"Continue with what you were doing, Instructor." Hyperion taps gently against the nape of my neck, a taunt and warning. "And don't move, Dincht, 'less you want to see Puberty Boy here wearing the Instructor's brains."

Zell growls audibly while I close my eyes, sorting out the flow of magic. Outnumbered and then taken out one by one, we have indubitably lost this round. We have not died yet, though, and there is still a chance to turn this around. It is a relief to finally muster the concentration to release the magic into Squall, lifting most of the strain on my wrists and head.

"Good girl." I can hear Zell being restrained behind me as well, and it sounds like he is giving and getting bruises in the process. I check briefly on Squall--easier breathing, considerably slower rate of bleeding--and twist around to look at Seifer up the length of Hyperion, his figure looming over me in the light-studded city night.

"Squall needs to be seen by a doctor, with particular attention to possible stress to his heart from emergency infusion of medical magic and potions, aside from the obvious injury. I also request that you contact Garden about our arrest and arrange for the terms of our release."

"You don't give the orders here, Trepe." He lowers Hyperion and takes a step back, his eyes never leaving me, Hyperion at the ready for the smallest sign of resistance. He might as well not have bothered--I am exhausted and alone, in no shape to fight back at the moment. "Take her in with the others. Him, too. I want him alive." They bring in a stretcher for Squall, at least. Thank goodness for small mercies.

"Seifer." My voice fights its way out of me as Squall is taken away and Galbadian soldiers cuff my hands behind my back. The cold burns my aching wrists as they force me to stand. "What happened?"

Standing in that cocky pose with Hyperion tapping at his shoulder, Seifer cuts an almost familiar figure. Even the cuts and bloodstains where Squall must have gotten him don't seem to bother him. Stray fireworks go off in the sky above him, stirring an almost-memory before it is gone. Seifer meets my gaze with a sneer.

"I found my dream, Quistis." His eyes are aglow with some kind of inner fire, a fanaticism I have never seen in him before. He has always been a sneering bully, but never this particular kind of sneering bully. And that frightens me, even after everything that happened this evening. "Take her away," he tells the soldiers.

The thoughts do not stop as I am marched to the waiting military vehicle and stuffed inside. _They never saw anyone take so much questioning without cracking... Steadfastly denied... No Garden was implicated... You'd rather see it in ruins? _

Come with me to a place of no return. Red smile and mocking dead eyes.

What happened to him? What happened during his imprisonment that turned him against Garden, that brought this subtle and profound change over him? I don't know what to think or believe anymore. I know it makes me heartsick to imagine what Seifer might have suffered while he was believed dead, beyond all help and trapped in the consequence of his mad valor for a home he had never seemed to care about.

As the city falls away behind us I manage a small, bitter smile as I allow myself the coldest of comforts.

Look on the bright side, at least he isn't dead.

* * *

I was reminded by a review that I still had this project going. Thank you all so much for your reviews and kind words. All feedback is much appreciated.

An eponymous chapter sounds like it should be the last, but actually I have a few more to go. Two more chapters and an epilogue, if the plan holds. Please let it hold this time. (Crosses fingers) I tried to hold off on naming a non-final chapter the same as the story, but I couldn't resist the temptation of interposing Squall's physical fall with Seifer's metaphorical fall.

I've always kind of wondered how Edea, Seifer, and the Galbadians managed to capture the SeeDs after the failed assassination attempt when the SeeDs seemed so tough in-game. The easy answer is that it was for the sake of their getting to D-District Prison, but I wanted to have the process make sense, too. Hopefully this one does. It's arguable, in this version of events, that it was Quistis' determination to save Squall's life that led to the party's wholesale capture. If she'd let Squall be damned and gotten all the combatants together, they might have at least had a fighting chance. Whether she would have done the same, or at least done the same so fervently, for anyone else is the million-dollar question. The beauty of first person point of view is that it makes these questionable decisions come across as so right.

Mag poisoning I think was lifted straight from altol's Fire and Ice. Other descriptions of the drawbacks of magic and potions were largely inspired by the ideas and descriptions in F&I. I like the idea of convenient magic demanding a cost, and of characters having to weigh between different consequences, i.e. immediate death and possible heart damage.


	9. How You Died

First update in approximately forever. Still don't own the characters, nor any of the directly quoted (that is, "new") dialogue, which all come from the game. (I did modify some of it, and edited the holy heck out of some parts.) There's a brief reference to another fic of mine, _Dazzled,_ if you can spot it. Enjoy!

**The Fall**

**Chapter 8: How You Died**

I am not unfamiliar with death, particularly of the violent sort. There is a surprising variety of gruesome deaths a mercenary can deal out, witness, or fall prey to. The blade, the bludgeon, the bullet, explosions, magic, poison... each has its unique way of working on living tissue until it is no longer living. This, I can deal with. Have had to deal with. There is mourning or satisfaction, finality. Life goes on.

It is the other deaths that trouble me still, the little deaths without closure. When a friend's eyes turn cold and uncaring sometime after her ninth mission, when your conversations turn to silences, when you feel your present adrift without an anchor to a past or future. There are losses so ephemeral that they are impossible to define, let alone mourn. Perhaps they should be a source of triumph. It means we are stronger, less sentimental, less vulnerable. Perhaps.

It was a little death I saw in Squall's eyes, when he rejoined us at the prison. I have seen eyes go dead after imprisonment and interrogation, but what was heartbreaking with Squall was the _resignation_ I saw there. The stripping away of trust and safety was something he had accepted too long ago, and the tender mercies of D-District Prison only confirmed that acceptance. It steadied him, that buried ember of anger. After the initial anxiety I did not fear for him as much.

But it was Seifer who did this to him. I keep returning to that fact, inescapable and galling. Whether as a direct participant or by tacit acceptance, Seifer treated Squall in ways that made him flinch away from even a friendly touch and has him sit up from night terrors some nights, snarling a name. I lie very still when I wake with him, knowing it would wound his pride if I tried to mother him. _Go talk to a wall._ I am awake long after Squall's breathing is slow and even again, the strangled cry of "Seifer...!" still loud in my ears.

Maybe I'm taking this too personally. Seifer quite clearly changed sides, and he acted as a belligerent would. SeeD are not angels, and if necessary, like it or not, I know I can do such things. If what Seifer did is vile, then so am I. So is Garden.

Yet it sits wrong with me, that he could have done this thing. Knowing full well Squall is a newly-minted SeeD with little in the way of useful information, inflicting pain for pleasure or vindictiveness, not necessity? _I told you, Trepe--it's_ my _fight. You'd rather see it in ruins?_ Everything about the situation sits wrong, and I do not know what to think anymore.

I only know that there is a death of sorts in what Seifer did. To take that basic trust in the world away from another is to see that it can be done. That is why I will not be happy should I ever have to resort to torture, and it is why Seifer crossed a line he cannot cross back.

My belief in him died a little, too, and that is another kind of death. Something I cope with, because I must.

* * *

The entire Garden tilts at a strange angle, its foundations rocked and then resettled askew. The surrounding pavement has a rippled look where the shockwaves from the missiles tore through the ground. The ruined basketball court seems to echo with memories, the reverberation of a moment when the very air shattered and screamed. This place seems to remember that single instant when everything changed beyond repair.

Can there be repair or reparation? Any possibility of redemption, from something like this? Reassurance, return, recovery. All these re- words, because the only way to fix this is to go back. Back before the moment when everything changed, before the destruction and death, when he...

Before the moment he changed forever in my eyes.

I see myself in Rinoa's troubled face, and hear myself in her stammered words. I am SeeD and should not be so conflicted, yet her fear and ambivalence towards this fight are mine as well. With the evidence of a former student's, a former comrade's monstrosity before my eyes like this... Can anyone say with confidence that we will emerge in one piece from this? How will it change us, if it does not kill us?

"I understand." Irvine's voice is gentle, the plateau twang melodic in this place of silent echoes. "Someone might not be here. Someone you love may disappear before your very eyes." His voice lilts and dips in sorrow. "It's tough when you live your life thinking that way. But that's why I fight."

He picks up a basketball, and takes a deep breath. All eyes are on him now, though he speaks quietly.

"When I was a little kid... I was about four or so... I was in an orphanage."

And with all we have seen in the course of this journey, his next words are perhaps the most terrible and wonderful. He speaks in that musical voice of love and loss intertwined into one, of memory eroding gradually into forgetfulness. Our gradually joining remembrances touch something dormant inside of me until I see it all, the old stone house, the ocean, the children we used to be.

"Hey... Do you guys remember setting off fireworks?" His words hesitant at first, then more certain, Zell stirs another memory. The beach, the lighthouse...

"We did set off fireworks." How could I have forgotten it, all of this, for so long? The streaks of color cut across that endless summer sky. _I'm going to die like that._

What? The voice is too familiar for comfort. _Cry-baby Ze-ell! Go back to be-ed!_

"Oh, my..." The realization is sudden and sharp. I see him so clearly in my mind now, the arrogance, the fire, the fascination of him.

Irvine nods, confirming the realization. "Seifer was there, too. Except for Rinoa, we were all there."

I remember them all now, the children I grew up with, the friends who stand by me today. Earnest, good-hearted Zell, tiny Selphie as bright as she was adorable (if a bit of a handful), Irvy who was shy and quiet but never missed what went on around him, sad-eyed little Squall who I never stopped worrying about, long after our childhood by the sea was forgotten.

And Seifer, loud and obnoxious, whose sole purpose in life seemed to be causing trouble. He shouldered his way rudely into everyone's attention, and turned everything he touched into mayhem. Always goading Squall, tormenting us, forcing me to fight back, shaking us forever out of our contentment. (But can I honestly say I didn't enjoy it, in a twisted kind of way?)

Seifer, who wanted to go out in a blaze of fiery glory. _My fight from the get-go. You'd rather see it in ruins?_

Seifer, the torturer, murderer, traitor. The descent I cannot understand but must if I am to have closure, or maybe some small chance of winning him back.

Could that answer lie in our shared childhood? Seifer was so shaken by the Sorceress Edea, whose voice was chillingly, achingly familiar to me. Where did I hear it before?

_I'm very happy for you, Quistis_ Her eyes were dark, her face kind. The gentle, warm voice washed over me, holding me in safety and peace. _I hope you will be very happy. I will miss you._

"I... remember. Yes, I remember now." The words come slowly as the memories flood in, too many, too sudden. How could I have so much of my life missing and not even realize it?

_Don't go._ Those beautiful green eyes were brilliant in the sunlight, strangely transfixing. _Don't go with them, Quisty._ He wasn't happy for me, didn't know little orphaned girls wanted parents who would love them and buy them nice things. What did I want to do? It was obvious, wasn't it, that I was _supposed_ to want parents of my own? That stupid, smart-mouth boy.

But he turned out to be right, didn't he. Damn him. _Doesn't she look just like us, Brenn?_ Pictures of another little blond girl all over the house, the sickening realization that the daughter they yearned for was not I, and never would be. The silences grew longer until they became a physical thing, and killed.

"Things didn't work out too well at my new home."

I imagine her sitting before that rosewood dresser one last time, where the glass and crystal would refract the sunlight into a hundred little rainbows. I loved to watch her make herself pretty and she would smile watching me watching her, and sometimes let me wear a little of her special scent. Her frozen smile was perfectly painted in death as in life.

"So I came to Garden at the age of ten." I hurry past the memories of my mother, my brief and disastrous adoptive life. (Why, after all these years, do I still feel that I've killed her?) "That was when I first noticed Seifer and Squall..."

The words seem to come of their own, as hesitant and rambling as my own journey through this maze of rediscovered past and emotion. It's embarrassing to realize how wrong I was about my own feelings, how the past twisted and warped them without ever going away. If it was the same way with Seifer...

If Seifer was vulnerable because of his Guardian Force-induced amnesia, could that be at least partially explain why the Sorceress affected him to the extent she did? Why was she so familiar to me, and maybe to Seifer, too?

Come with me, she said back in Timber. Come with me-

_Come with me, Quistis._ The lady had such a soft, warm smile. _My name is Edea. You can call me Matron._

That voice. It comes to me now, lullabies, stories, admonishments, laughter... it was all that voice that I heard again in Timber, when it was cold and harsh, but still the same voice.

"Hey." It's all I can do to keep my voice nonchalant. This whole childhood memory situation is so new, I need indepedent verification to know I'm not mistaken. Was Matron's name really Edea? "Do you all remember Matron?"

Zell puckers his face up, and I can tell the mention of her touched off a memory in him. "She was always wearin' black..."

"Very kind... Long black hair..." The memories become clearer even as I speak. "Yes, I really admired her." She was the first, perhaps the only mother figure I know. Janis Trepe was too hollowed out by grief to be a mother to anyone, and I probably only knew a shell of who she used to be before she lost her little girl. Her _real_ daughter. I shake that thought away.

"...Look alike? Nah, that's not it. Matron's name is Edea Kramer." I start at the name. "Matron is Sorceress Edea."

So that was it. That was the hold she had over Seifer, or at least part of it. God, Seifer... If he had not forgotten, would he still have fallen under her spell? Or am I making excuses for him--can anything excuse his actions, the destruction we see all around us? And even knowing this, the question remains.

"Why is the Matron...?"

Irvine's shrug is helpless, and he is correct when he says there is no way to know. There is quiet, unassuming wisdom in the way he speaks of this fight and what it means to him.

"I say we fight--shoot for a common goal. Hey." A slow smile comes to his face as he glances over at Selphie. "At least it'll keep us together a little longer."

"Yeah, let's do it." Zell pumps a fist. "We can't run from her for the rest of our lives." That's the Zell I know, practical and brave.

Selphie sighs. "It's such a bummer... I can't believe we have to fight Matron."

"I know." But is there really any other way? Or rather, any other way that will let me live with myself? "But Zell is right. We can't run from her forever." Nor can I run from Seifer. I find it hard to believe, with what I now remember about the woman, but even if Matron Edea enticed Seifer by exploiting his vulnerability to the past, the fact remains that he--they--must be stopped.

So this is how it goes. We go up against the woman who raised us, and someone we grew up with. At least we go into it with eyes wide open, thanks to Irvine.

"You guys are fearless." I catch Rinoa's quiet voice as she talks to Squall. I squash the pang in my chest at the sight of them standing together. I used to think it was jealousy, and maybe it is, that I am neither needed nor wanted, can never compare. Again. Damn it, Quistis. Stop this.

"I wish we didn't have to fight, either." Squall's voice is as low as Rinoa's, but I can tell how heartfelt his answer is. It reverberates in me, because I wish, more than anything, that things could go back to the way they were, before the moment everything changed. That Edea were still our Matron and Seifer our annoyer-in-chief. I wish...

But wishing will do us no good. Fighting might. The weight of the whip at my side is both terrible and comforting. Any doubts, any consequences we can deal with... after. If there is an after. At least there is closure in the death of the body. Watching the gentle fall of snow over this demolished Garden, I can't help but think it's the little deaths that truly linger.

* * *

It comes to this, as we knew, as we actively worked for. Somehow it is no easier for all that, but not as difficult as I dreaded. We made this decision willingly, and are here of our own will. All that remains is to follow through.

We step from the elevator into the Sorceress's room, fully on guard. For a moment our footfalls are the only sound in the room. The Sorceress watches from her high seat, her gaze cold and hard. Her face is familiar even under her outlandish makeup and the unfamiliar look on her face, but the familiarity no longer confuses me.

Before the Sorcess stands her knight, gunblade drawn.

"Oh, you shouldn't have." He is mocking, still cocksure, though pale and unkempt. "I was going to come visit you at my old home."

My teeth grit and heat rises to my face as I think of the glass-littered hallways of Balamb Garden, the eight-year-old cadet in our infirmary with the bloodied bandage over his eyes. I want to scream at this man who stands to face us, shame him, hurt him.

Most of all, though, I just want to know. Why? You were willing to die for our home. Was that a lie? What made you do this?

Squall is more succinct. "Shut up."

Seifer smirks to see he has gotten to us. "Did you guys come to fight Matron?" There is real anger in his sneer now, a cold glint in his eyes. "After all she's done for us?"

None of us answers. Thank Hyne Irvine prepared us for this, rearming us with our memory so we would not be blindsided as Seifer may have been. We made that decision because we cannot stand by idly, and also because it may be the only way to get her back.

Will we get Seifer back, too? Is there anything of him left to come back?

"Instructor Trepe." His tone is smooth, almost caressing, and I have to stop myself from flinching. "I'm still one of your dearest students, aren't I?"

I stand a little straighter, looking him straight in the eye. In the moment I open my mouth I feel the cold of the blade against my neck, hear Squall call out in a nightmare, see the ruins of Trabia Garden. So much has changed, so much done, and no matter what his reasons I cannot allow myself to be shaken in this fight.

"Not anymore." Not after all that. Not if I am to stand up and fight.

"It's too late, Seifer." Squall shakes his head. "You can't mess with our minds." We came prepared for this, both the physical and the psychological. And yet, as I watch an increasingly agitated and incoherent Seifer and the cruel, impassive face of the woman watching from behind him, I wish I were anywhere but here.

It doesn't matter anymore. Now is the time to fight, or die. The man I used to know, that I thought I knew, rushes forward with blade ready and teeth bared. My whip hurtles through the air, seeking a limb to grab or skin to slash open.

Let's get that monster.

* * *

I stumble to a stop at the doorway and gape. The grotesque form of the Sorceress is very still, suspended in the clear gel of her containment chamber, the mass of golden wires restraining her like a bright web. And yet the aura of malice and ill-will is almost palpable.

And before her, dwarfed by her form, Seifer, wounded, exhausted, barely standing, holds Rinoa restrained with his blade at her throat.

"Seifer!" Squall throws himself across the impossible expanse of that room towards them, but not in time, I know already, never in time. "NO!"

The Sorceress's Knight flicks a brief glance at him, at us, a snarl on his lips. He is desperate with nowhere to turn, a cornered beast of prey.

"Rinoa and Adel!" His hoarse voice rises to a hysterical pitch, mingling with the echo of Squall's voice. "The sorceresses as one!" His triumph sounds like a cry of anguish as he drags Rinoa closer to the Sorceress at bladepoint. "Watch closely, Squall!"

We are all running now, our frantic footfalls loud in the echoing room, our shouts frightened and nonsensical. I am unable to take my eyes from Seifer and Rinoa, the wild-eyed look on his face as though he, too, cannot believe this sight, this situation. For a moment he hesitates, the arm pushing Rinoa trembling, and my heart soars in brief hope.

Then he grits his teeth and gives one final push. Rinoa falls to her knees before Adel as if in obeisance, paralyzed with fear.

It's like a nightmare I cannot wake from. Adel's frozen face twitches, then splits in a wide grin_._ The entire containment chamber surges forward as she moves to claim her prize. Rinoa puts up an arm in futile self-defense but the Sorceress reaches out, the golden wires holding her singing as they break, and Rinoa's scream is thin and helpless as she is... devoured...

As we move to face Adel, to defeat her before she can completely absorb Rinoa (so helpless, like a fragile puppet, half buried in the other Sorceress's body) I see a shadow slink away at the edge of sight. And a shadow is all that remains of him if he is capable of this cowardice. I put him from my mind in the face of the battle at hand.

"We're saving Rinoa!" That puppy-eyed hero worship. _He'll be okay, right? He's really amazing..._ Damn it all, hang _in_ there, Rin.

For me that is how he died, this last little death. I will mourn him after, if there is such a thing.

* * *

One more chapter and an epilogue to go!


End file.
